Thandiwe Newton

 ( 1972 Births ) 

In 2007, Newton co-starred with Eddie Murphy as his love interest in the comedy Norbit. She played opposite Simon Pegg as his ex-girlfriend in the 2007 comedy Run Fatboy Run. She next portrayed Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State in W., Oliver Stone's biography of President George W. Bush. The film was released in October 2008. Newton was an introducer at Wembley Stadium on 7 July 2007, for the UK leg of Live Earth. She was due to introduce former US Vice President Al Gore to the concert, but he was delayed, leaving Newton to tell jokes in an attempt to entertain the audience.Needham, Alex; "Live Earth: The live blog, part 2" The Guardian, 7 July 2007. Newton next portrayed fictional US First Daughter Laura Wilson in 2012, a disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich and released 13 November 2009. In July 2011, Newton delivered a TED talk on "Embracing otherness, embracing myself." She discussed finding her "otherness" as a child growing up in two distinct cultures, and as an actress playing many different selves. She acted in Tyler Perry's movie For Colored Girls (2010), adapted from Ntozake Shange's 1975 original choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.

In 2012, she starred opposite Tyler Perry in his romantic drama film Good Deeds, the film was a moderate financial success but received negative reviews. That same year she made her West End debut playing Paulina Salas in the revival of the Ariel Dorfman play Death and the Maiden at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Kate Kellaway of The Guardian wrote of her performance, "She has been completely miscast. She looks and sounds too immaculate. And the trouble is that, with a less than brilliant lead, the play's contrivance starts to show through." In 2013, Newton starred in Rogue, the first original drama series for DirecTV's Audience Network. She left Rogue during the third season. In 2015, she starred in the US miniseries The Slap.

In 2017, she served as a narrator for the documentary entitled Bill Cosby: Fall of an American Icon, an exposé on the sexual assault charges laid against Cosby, which aired on BBC One. In the same year, Newton played DCI Roseanne "Roz" Huntley in the fourth season of BBC One's Line of Duty, a role for which she received a BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress.

Newton appeared as Val in the Star Wars film , which was released in May 2018 to generally favorable reviews but bombed at the box office with a worldwide gross of $393.2 million. Newton became the first black woman to have a major non-alien role in a Star Wars film; however, she expressed disappointment in the role as the fate of the character was changed during filming and found it to be a mistake for the franchise in the sense of what it meant for black women in the franchise. Additionally, Scott Mendelson for Forbes felt that Newton was "underutilized" and David Edelstein for Vulture wrote in praise of her performance: "The only thing wrong with Thandie Newton’s performance is that there’s not enough of it."

In a 2021 interview, Newton announced that she would be changing her name back to its original form "Thandiwe", and would be credited as such beginning with Reminiscence (2021). She also said that she would attempt to have corrections applied to her past performance credits. In 2022, Newton played the lead role of Sandra Guidry in the thriller God’s Country which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. For her performance in the film, she received a nomination for Outstanding Lead Performance at the Gotham Awards.

In 2008, Newton visited the poverty-stricken village of Nampasso in Mali, describing it as a "humbling experience".

In 2013, Newton led the One Billion Rising flash mob in London for justice, gender equality, and an end to violence.

In 2016, Newton stated she had been the victim of a director who repeatedly showed his friends a video of her in a sexually graphic audition she had made as a teenager. She cited this experience as part of why she had taken the Westworld role, which involved substantial nudity and reflected experiences of survivors of sexual abuse while also asking moral questions about what it means to be human. In 2018, she said she was disappointed not to have been invited to participate in Time's Up, a movement against sexual harassment, considering that she had been "ostracised" for having spoken out about alleged sexual abuse by a director.

Newton was ranked one of the best-dressed women in 2018 by fashion website Net-a-Porter. Later that year, she was named as one of the 100 most influential black British people in the Powerlist. In 2020, Newton was one of a number of celebrities and MPs who signed a letter opposing the deportation of 50 convicted offenders, including murderers and rapists, from the UK to Jamaica.